From the Sublimey to the Cor Blimey

Slightly Frustrated Self-Promotion (Day 1)

So, I was trying to update my ‘novels, novellas and anthologies’ page to catch up with all the things I’ve published/are coming out/have had re-published of late. I really shouldn’t be allowed a website – I’m horrible at keeping it up to date.

(Which reminds me… do tell me, as readers – what do people want from authorly websites? What do you want? And does it really matter – is anyone reading mine anyway?)

Anyway, last summer I re-published Thrace, which is… well, this is what I’ve just put on my website:

Thrace is a science fiction anthology, consisting of three novella length stories. It is definitely one of the favourite things I’ve ever written, and has had a lot of positive reviews and pretty much no readers, which is very very sad. It is set on the planet Gielgud, which is home to an indigenous (and androgynous) species called Tsygons, but which has been colonised by humans, who have pretty much taken over the place. The stories are very plotty, especially the first and third, but with a certain amount of sexual content as well (because, well, it’s me, and that tends to be how my stories come). But I honestly think it’s quite good…

So, I’m going to spend the next three days giving you a little bit more detail about each of the three novellas which comprise Thrace. (And forgive me: I am terrible at synopses.)

Ready? Let’s go…

Let Tsygons By Tsygons (oh, come on, I bet you couldn’t have resisted that pun any more than I could!), focuses on Jed Wilson, a medi-supporter (newly qualified doctor, pretty much) who has landed a job on Gielgud’s central city, Thrace. Tsygons keep coming into the hospital with mysterious symptoms, and Jed and his Tsygon colleague, V367L (you get used to the Tsygon names; zie’s called ‘V’ for short) have to try and find out why. Things are made more complicated by the fact that Jed, despite knowing much less about medicine, is V’s boss – because V is a Tsygon, and Jed is human – and that Jed is rather attracted to V, but unable for many reasons to act on this attraction. And it seems that there is much more going on than first meets the eye…

Meet the characters in a snippet of the story:

V367L gave him a considering look, then plunged into a detailed technical description of hir job, of which Jed understood about a quarter. Bad-tempered or not, the Tsygon clearly knew a hell of a lot about what they were doing here. In order to stop the flow of brain-hurting information, Jed interrupted.

“You’re my boss, right?”

V367L gave Jed an inscrutable look. “No,” zie said. “You’re mine.”

“Huh? But… but you know about ten times more than I do,” objected Jed. “Or did you not want the job?”

“I’m a Tsygon,” V said, as if that explained everything. “Nevertheless, you’ll be working with me a lot. Does that bother you?”